The Anglo-American Oil War: International Politics and the Struggle for Foreign Petroleum, 1912-1945

Hardcover | December 30, 2018

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One of the least well-known and least discussed struggles of the 20th century was played out between the British and the Americans. From before World War I to the end of World War II, Great Britain and the United States vied with each other throughout the world to control the supply of oil. The Anglo-American Oil War examines this power struggle - identified by contemporaries as an oil war - and demonstrates how America's increasing dominance over the oilfields reflected wider shifts in international relations. During the first half of the 20th century, the strategic and economic importance of petroleum helped to define relations between the United States and Great Britain. While both governments sought to control oil resources within their own political sphere of influence, they frequently came into direct conflict over the control of oil. From the first hints of diplomatic discord over the course of the Mexican Revolution, through the British discovery of oil in Iraq, competition over the Kuwait concession, the oil strike in Masjid-e Sulaiman to the negotiation of the Anglo-American Oil Agreement in 1944 which, in theory, settled the dispute, the oil war offers a fascinating and revealing reflection of the transfer of hegemony from Great Britain to the United States

Fiona Venn is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Essex, UK. Her previous publications includ e The Oil Crisis, The New Deal and Oil Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century.